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High Psionics
This page lists all “High Psionics” rules for Dreamscarred Press materials. The High Psionics Campaign In a high psionics campaign, psionics does not merely exist, as it might in a standard game that includes psionics, it flourishes. Psionics is common, and powerful manifesters are real threats to the world at large. A world of high psionics is more likely to have NPCs with manifesting ability, or psionic items available for purchase in the bazaar, or psionic monsters accosting travelers. A high psionics game is more likely to use soulknives instead of paladins, wilders instead of sorcerers, and psions instead of wizards. Even if you do not want to make your game exclusively psionic in nature, increasing the number of NPCs with levels in psionic classes, or enemies with psionic ability, can create a high psionics world. Feats: Wild Talent and Unlocked Talent In campaigns where psionics is more commonplace, such as the Third Dawn Campaign Setting, it is recommended to remove the prerequisite of Wild Talent from Unlocked Talent and substitute the Unlocked Talent feat for Wild Talent to represent how the ability to manifest powers is common within the world. Prestige Classes: Aegii and Soulknives Sometimes, an aegis or soulknife may qualify for a prestige class with “+1 level of existing manifesting class” as a class feature. This increased psionic training helps those who follow the path of the astral suit or mind blade as well as the path of the manifester. At each level where a manifester level would increase by one, treat the aegis or soulknife as if he had gained a class level for the purposes of damage reduction and customization points in the case of the aegis, or enhanced mind blade in the case of the soulknife. The character does not gain any other benefits from an increased level (bonus customizations, uses of reconfigure, blade skills, etc.). It’s less common, but sometimes a multiclass soulknife or aegis enters one of these prestige classes with a bit of manifesting talent. In high psionics games, for this special case, each indicated level of the prestige class advances both the aegis’s damage reduction and customization points or the soulknife’s enhanced mind blade, as above, and his existing manifester level by one level. In games that are not high psionics, choose one or the other to increase, but not both. Prestige Classes: Gifted Blade Soulknives Some soulknife class features and blade skills depend wholly on their class level influencing their competitive edge, and with prestige classes you may significantly weaken otherwise necessary abilities to your success with the class. To that end, classes that advance a soulknife’s mind blade also count as soulknife levels to determine the effectiveness of blade skills and other soulknife class level specific effects. This options assumes that all of your soulknives are gifted blade soulknives who have retained their psychic strike class feature. (Editor's Note: See "Soulknives: Manifesting" below) Using this option, gifted blades that enter into prestige classes that advance manifesting for their gifted blade powers also advance their mind blade enhancement bonus as well, as the two abilities are intimately tied together with this option. The inverse is true on classes that specifically advance mind blade enhancement bonuses, the character’s gifted blade manifesting is advanced (and only gifted blade manifesting - if the character possesses other manifesting classes, these are not advanced by this optional rule). If the class specifically advances manifesting and specifically advances the mind blade, then the gifted blade’s manifesting and mind blade are advanced independently so as to not receive double the normal advancement rate (or if they possessed manifesting from another class, they could choose to advance that manifesting class’s powers instead; example being a soulknife/psychic warrior who advances their mind blade and psychic warrior manifesting, but does not advance their gifted blade manifesting). Soulknives: Manifesting Depending on the type of campaign world you play in, if the GM would call it a ‘high psionics campaign’, it would be within reason to allow soulknives to add the manifesting and power progression of the Gifted Blade archetype to all soulknives by default, for a more ‘psionic’ soulknife. This gives the soulknife more of a competitive edge in a world where manifesting and/or magic is highly dominant without compromising the combat abilities of the class. The Gifted Blade archetype in return adds some additional flexibility as well as in and out of combat versatility to the soulknife that lets it stand as both a combative and psionic equal to classes like the psychic warrior or marksman. In games with higher levels of expertise, powerful classes and abilities, or just generally better toys available to people, it would be considered prudent to add the Gifted Blade archetype’s powers to the soulknife to keep them competitive.